Category: Performances

This month in Todmorden we’re delighted to welcome Otis Jordan into the fold. Otis is an experimental guitarist who works with field recordings and constructed instruments to forge a sonic vision that is eerie, jauntily melodic and entirely his own. https://otisjordan.bandcamp.com http://www.otisjordan.com “Like watching The Faust Tapes live” – Graham Massey, 808 State Before and…

Hello all! This month’s Todmorden guest set comes from a brand new duo of Simon Prince and Johnny Hunter. Both are fabulous musicians and frequent visitors to the Manchester Noise Upstairs events. You may know Simon from his many appearances with Wolfscarers, and other groups. He’s a fiery tenor sax player who’s equally as fiery…

Hanslip / Karlsen is a new collaboration between the established British saxophonist Mark Hanslip and the young Norwegian drummer Emil Karlsen. The sax / drum format provides an open space for exploration of various soundscapes, ranging from abstract textures to free jazz. In September 2019, the duo released their debut album ‘Planish’ (on Karlsen’s Noumenon…

The Noise Upstairs returns to the Lion for an 8th month (and counting) on Tuesday 24 September. This month we’re delighted to welcome newly-formed Pollen Count as our guest act. Before and after their set we’ll pull names from the hat to jam. As ever the night is free, and we’ll start to gather from…

Hello all. Our next Todmorden event will be one day after the bank holiday and three days before Tor Fest 2019. Heather is in flower on the hills, and life is good in Tod.   This month we have not one but two special guests. Our musical guest this month is Gloomy Planets, playing their…

This month’s special guest Bill Thompson is a sound artist and composer. He performs as a soloist and with a number of groups including zerospace with Lucia H Chung and Ian Stonehouse, a duo with Phil Durrant, Airfield with choreographer Ian Spink, and in the past with Keith Rowe, Faust, EXAUDI and others. Although originally trained as a…

This month we’re delighted to welcome Hedge Fund Managers to The Noise Upstairs Todmorden: Room frequency jamming and detune protocols narrowcast with scramble emergency code relay evocation. Corrupted crosstalk chaos pacification. Ritual derangement within self-aware pathways and unsigned posts, establishment of mutiny in the order: schismatic schematics. Dishabited apparatus delivery quotients of mediated protean focus…

This month’s guests are Ripsaw Catfish, stopping in on their short tour of the North (and London). Ripsaw Catfish are: Cath Roberts (baritone saxophone) and Anton Hunter (guitar), they have been making improvised music together for several years, and there is nothing to suggest that this won’t happen again on the 25th June. Hopefully with you…

Emil Karlsen’s acoustic solo project is based around making the most out of the drum set in terms of extended techniques, timbre and textures, improvised. Inspired by his Norwegian background, this project is a portrait of many years thinking compositionally and texturally about the drums, especially when put in a solo context . His main…

The Noise Upstairs Todmorden will feature a collective from my favourite record, coffee, book and vintage clothing shop this side of the Mississippi – The Magic City. True to the spirit of night, they’re not totally sure about who’ll be playing, or what they’ll play. But the mood music in recent days suggests that we’ll…

Aby Vulliamy (viola) Anton Hunter (acoustic guitar and mandolin) Gemma Bass (violin) Johnny Hunter (drums) Brought together by Johnny, these are some of our finest musicians in the North. All from varying backgrounds, including Classical, Folk, Jazz, and Rock, they meet in the middle with their shared love of improvised music. This group will be…

This month’s guests are Ecka Mordecai and Kate Armitage. Both of whom have played for us in Manchester separately, so we’re excited to hear them together in Tod! Ecka Mordecai is sound artist and composer currently based in Todmorden. She composes for ‘cello using graphic scores and text, as well as creates sound objects. Kate…

Wheeze Furnace is Geoff Bright on bass sax, soprano sax and mouth and Nathan Bettany on oboe and cor anglais. A cross-Pennine airing of this Sheffield duo’s dirty laundry! Expect a soiled sonic shirt tail of involuntary revelations, asthmatic explosions and stubborn sound-stains of the inner everyday. Before and after their set will be the usual…

  Wolf Scarers, formed in 2010 by Simon Prince and Keith Jafrate, are a sax duo who play improvisations that swerve from gentle meditations that almost become chamber music across to full-blown shout-ups in the true tenor sax tradition, via, possibly, messed-up marching band funk and deconstructed jazz strut. “They really are in conversation and…